Mana's Barely Official Total Drama Rankings
my opinions have weak basis (bases? basises?) and constantly change so let's make this ~~kinda~~ official 113. Owen (Total Drama Action) TDI Owen was a mixed bag, on one hand I liked his happy-go-lucky attitude and innocent demeanor, on the other I hated how he was frequently portrayed as the hero or the good person, and I DESPISED the toilet humor with a passion. TDA Owen lands in the bottom of my list, even below those atrocities (you know who), because the second appearance of the character capitalizes on all his flaws and take away whatever I had to still enjoy Owen as a character. Just in the first episode we already had disturbing food shit with Owen, which honestly made me not watch the season for quite some time until I realized I was missing good stuff too. Unsurprisingly, the first half of Owen's TDA plot seemed to revolve around his bowels. Fun! Luckily, Owen was booted fairly early, but not without a nauseating sequence that involved not only a heartfelt speech and "awws" from fellow competitors, but also painted Courtney as this huge villain who cheated to get Fan Favorite Owen out when actually... the contestants were complete morons and voted for Courtney even though they knew she had immunity???? Coincidentally or not, after Owen's elimination we had what I call The Golden Age of TDA, which ranged from "One Million Bucks B.C." to "Get a Clue", finally ending with... Owen's return! Yup, not only was that a TERRIBLE decision, but it caught me completely by surprise making matters even worse. Luckily the toilet humor was toned down A LOT compared to his first-half appearance, still, seeing every shitty thing Owen did be justified by "but he's funneh" made me pissed and to this day I still do not consider him an official TDA contestant post-return, only a "saboteur twist" à la BBUK14, just out of spite. Yes, I'm very mature. 112. Zoey (Total Drama All-Stars) While I have arguments for ROTIZoey not being the most boring character in the entire franchise, in All-Stars she is exactly what people accuse her of being: solely an extension of Mike's character. The feisty, independent Zoey that took so long to show up by the end of RotI is dead and gone in her All-Stars appearance, as she devolves into the insipid protagonist she was in the beginning of RotI, except with much more screentime and probably only a third of her brain. Seriously, it's not that bad to accept they made her a bland protagonist, or even that they solidified her as an extension to Mike's character, what bothers me the most about Zoey 2.0 is how much of a COMPLETE MORON she becomes just so Mike's plot can advance. 111. Mike (Total Drama All-Stars) Zoey and Mike were already not interesting at all in TDROTI, so you might guess how ELATED I was when I discovered they would be components of the central plot in TDAS, which takes an obnoxiously high amount of screentime! No, Mike is still not interesting, much like his ROTI self we see too much of his WACKY PERSONALITIES!!! and too little of who the real Mike is, except this time we have an extremely generic villain personality who... breaks things. I could argue Mike was a season-ruining character, but to be honest, he was just one (maybe the worst, but still just one) of the several flaws that plagued an atrocious season that made me completely lose faith in the Total Drama Series... Until Ridonculous Race showed up, that is. 110. Cameron (Total Drama All-Stars) It puzzles me why Cameron was even in All-Stars, as all he did was stay in for an ungodly amount of episodes while doing absolutely nothing, then somehow derailing Gwen's character EVEN FURTHER by randomly kissing her in his boot episode (?). So basically he occupied the slot of an actual interesting character and contributed to the continuous destruction of Gwen's character for no real reason so eww. 109. Cameron (Total Drama Revenge of the Island) All-Stars Cameron was an atrocity, but his ROTI self wasn't too far from it. While in a completely different storyline, Cameron manages to suck just as much (a little less for not ruining any other character), by being treated as this underdog the entire season while... never really being one? He was sociable, had a solid alliance with Mike & Zoey (great choice in allies, fam), and was smart and useful at challenges, so all they could do to showcase his underdog-y-ness was... slapstick humor I guess? So his win was the most telegraphed win of pretty much anything even though it was pained as a ~shocker~; Lightning is the true #ShockWinner 108. Leshawna (Total Drama World Tour) It may come off as weird since TDWT Leshawna barely existed, but of all the let's-ruin-a-good-character-arc instances in TD, this is the one that I hate the most. On top of being on a fodder team, Leshawna was probably the fodder-est character in it and I honestly can't remember a single thing she did the entire season except for the two things I hate. The first was fall for Alejandro, which sacrificed both her relationship with Harold from Action and the STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN in her, only to solidify him as totally irresistible. But honestly this one didn't bother me too much. What makes me LIVID, though, is the whole fight scene with Heather in Slap-Slap Revolution; not only did it come from absolute nowhere, but it also completely ruined the, excuse me, P-E-R-F-E-C-T closure of the Heather-Leshawna plot in Total Drama Action like why the fuck would the writers undo one of the greatest things to come out of that season? Did they think we all had forgotten that? Did THEY forget about that? Honestly, probably the latter, now excuse me while I pretend Leshawna's last time on Total Drama was in Action. 107. Gwen (Total Drama Action) Honestly, Gwen could absolutely never return after Total Drama Island and I'd be perfectly happy with it; her story was just ~closed~. But nope, they have to make her come back and they decide to... make her a megabitch for no real reason? I mean, she wasn't even a megabitch, Trent just got insane because the writers decided for some unexplained reason. I get it, they needed to put some ~drama~ between the couple, but I'm pretty sure there could be a better, less contrived way? The way The Chefshank Redemption was basically the "make Gwen suffer and be eliminated to pay for her crimes" episode still bothers me because what did she even do wrong there? I really don't get this obsession TD has of making a person to be treated a huge villain and suffer because of misunderstandings. But really, I'd rather forget the first episodes of TDA existed and it all started in Ocean's Eight (Or Nine) 106. Lindsay (Total Drama All-Stars) We all know Lindsay's main characteristic is being dumb, and I think it's safe to say we all love that in her. However, Lindsey has always relied on much more, she had a sweet bubbly personality and positive attitude to everything that always made her lovable and allowed her to go pretty far in most of her appearances. I guess in order to justify her being a first boot they just removed every possible characteristic she had except her stupidity and threw her in there for slotfiller; this is a derailment to her character as bad as Gwen's or Leshawna's, but it makes me less angry since she was there only one episode of a season that I (luckily) forget exists sometimes. 105. Ezekiel (Total Drama World Tour) Another instance of character derailment, yaaaay! In this case it's not too bad because the character in question already sucked, however, his entire TDWT plotline was unfunny, repetitive, predictable, borderline sadistic, and honestly kinda really sad. And not compelling sad, more like Donald Trump SAD! 104. Sugar (Total Drama Pahkitew Island) Sugar really angers me because she's a character with tons of potential: country gal, sassy, kinda dimwitted, pageant chick, etc. yet they basically decided to make her an N-toned Owen. Excessive, unneeded airtime: check. No plotline of their own yet makes it extremely far: check. Constantly shoehorned in every possible scene with some hammish, ~wacky~ antic: check. FUCKING TOILET HUMOR: check. Also, my biggest pet peeve in animation is how toilet humor is almost strictly associated with fat characters (toilet humor is... tolerable on its own, but WHY @this connection) and she makes me think of this a lot, especially in the latter half of the season. 103. Scott (Total Drama Revenge of the Island) What a terrible, terrible villain. After showing they can portray complex antagonists in TDWT, I guess they just decided to go back to basics and introduce us to The Russell Hantz of Total Drama, who made his way through by """CHEATING""" with IDOLS!!!! I know that this is a show for kids an all but let me complain here for a minute, Scott just seems like a character that a beginner fanfic writer would try to create in order to show us The Biggest Villain Ever! And don't even get me started on his revolting finale appearance; terrible, terrible decision by the showrunners. It manages to be somehow WORSE than everything we had seen of him throughout the season. 102. third time this character played